Anyone who has traveled the Boyne City – Charlevoix road here in Charlevoix County has driven past what was once known as the “Undine Settlement” of Hayes Township. What remains is a small rural cemetery along the highway and a relocated country schoolhouse on the opposite side of the road.

Prior to 1875, only a handful of early settlers could be found within this area of Hayes Township; Most notable among these were the families of Daniel Pierce Louisa Swan, Joseph Willis, Isaac Webster and Charles H. Whitford.

Throughout the 1870s others began to arrive and work, including the families of John Bacot, William Mcnally and Rev Barnabus H. Whitman. It was the establishment of the Undine Post Office in 1880 with Charles H. Whitford as Postmaster that would “officially” place the name Undine on the map.

Undine sprang to life with the establishment of a sqwmill, similar to many of the now-lost settlements in Northern Michigan. This occurred in the fall of 1884 with the arrival of Mr. Whitford’s brother-in-law, Ransom Cram. The two men formed a partnership in the Cram, Whitford & Sons Sawmill at the lakes’s end of Maple Grove Road. As mill workers and their families began to settle in among the farming community, the Undine Settlement witnessed a continuation of growth and development. When the milling operations was relocated to Charlevoix in 1895, the land, now cleared of its virgin timber, was again left to the farming community

While many of the descendents of the early Undine families remained in the area, most moved on the memories of Undine’s “heyday” were soon lost to the annals of time.